Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Hold On...

I'm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin tonight. I need to be getting to sleep soon (very soon!) but I was thinking about this.

This little glass cube has been sitting on my desk since 2009, any job I've had where a desk was involved. I love it. It's my little...terrarium? My piece of New Mexico thatI took home with me. I dug up some red earth on the road trip we took around the Southwest when my sister graduated from college. I threw in some souvenir rocks (hence the big hole in the one) and a teeny tiny pine cone I found. It kind of started as a joke.

I think it was before that I used that Navajo poem as the signature in my emails. The other day, anticipating this trip, I thought about it and smiled. "Hold on to what is good, even if it is a handful of earth..."

And it is good. And it's...literally, a handful of earth.

See the thing is, this silly little box of dirt reminds me of my biggest adventure to date. It reminds me of exploring and baking in the sun. Getting to know somewhere new, and knowing that it was some part of me I hadn't known I was missing.

It reminds me of the people that I got to know who I can't wait to see again, and of how hard it was sometimes out there, but how every time I stepped out into the canyons or stood on the top of a mountain or mesa...I knew it was right. I felt freer than I had ever felt.

Tonight, I thought of this again, and I smiled. I know that tomorrow, we'll descend with the Sandias in sight, over miles and miles of wide open spaces where I could run from sunup to sundown and never see another soul. I know that the sun will sit just over my shoulder and keep me warm. I know that I can let go of here and the things that hurt my heart and keep me up, even if it's just for a little while. I know I'm going home. The home that found me.